While on a trip to Thailand, a successful American businessman tries to radically change his life. Back in New York, his wife and daughter find their relationship with their live-in Filipino maid changing around them. At the same time, in the Philippines, the maid's family struggles to deal with her absence.

Poetic, experimental and different, Container is described by Lukas Moodysson as "a black and white silent movie with sound" and with the following words; "A woman in a man's body. A man in... See full summary »

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Storyline

In New York, the immature family man Leo Vidales is a successful businessman, owner of the Underlandish, a successful website of digital games and married to Dr. Ellen Vidales, a dedicated surgeon of the emergency room of a hospital. They have a daughter, Jackie, who is an intelligent girl that is raised by her nanny, the Filipino Gloria, who spends more time with her than Ellen. Gloria has two sons in the Philippines that miss her. When Leo need to travel to Singapore with his partner, Bob (Tom McCarthy), to sign a multi-million dollar contract with investors, Ellen operates on a boy stabbed in the stomach by his own mother and she feels connected to the boy and rethinks her relationship with Jackie. Meanwhile Leo is bored waiting for the negotiation of Bob with the investors and he decides to travel to Bangkok and lodges in a rustic cottage on the seashore. Leo meets the young prostitute and mother, Cookie, and he has a one night stand with her. Meanwhile, Gloria's ten year-old boy,...Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

User Reviews

Like Innaritu's "Babel", Lukas Moodysson's "Mammoth" focuses on groups of people who share connections with each other, as well as the dilemma of family members parted from their loved ones by the need to earn a living in the global economy. At the film's opening Leo is some kind of computer game whiz, living the American dream with his wife Ellen and a delightful 7 Y-O daughter in a vast apartment high above the streets of Manhattan. Their child's nanny Gloria resides with them, but this conscientious immigrant worker's warm exterior conceals a growing agitation at being separated from two young sons, who live with their grandmother back in the Philippines.

The idealistic, unworldly Leo must travel to Thailand for the signing of a business deal. As he sets off on his trip Ellen works a punishing schedule as an E.R. surgeon, fretting that she's losing her daughter's affection to Gloria, and compensating for this anxiety by getting emotionally entangled in the case of a child who has been brutally stabbed by his mother. After arriving at his Bangkok luxury hotel, Leo pines for his family, exchanging disjointed voice-mails with Ellen while he waits for the lawyers to conclude their negotiations. Eventually he escapes the city for a remote beach resort, where he befriends a young prostitute after rejecting her professional advances.

The film takes its time building up the pressure, but it's no great hardship watching such a talented cast heating up the stew until the pot boils over. After the storm breaks, Moodysson seems determined to avoid sentimentality, and tosses his characters into a whirlpool of heavyweight turmoil. When calm is restored, it's clear the struggles of the poor will always be remorseless and life-threatening - but the film's closing moments suggest that Leo and Ellen might also suffer some devastating future upheavals. In contrast to "Babel's" more hopeful conclusion, "Mammoth's" audience might wonder if it deserved such a tough lesson that momentary lapses can lead to bitter consequences, and bad things happen to decent people.

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